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Gaining Traction: Inbound Marketing for Startups

The document discusses inbound marketing strategies for startups. It recommends creating and sharing high-quality content to attract and engage customers through search engines, social media, blogs and other online channels. Specific tactics mentioned include developing sharing incentives, mining social networks for engagement, creating embeddable content, and giving the community a platform to contribute user-generated content. The goal is to earn interest from potential customers through these inbound channels rather than relying primarily on paid advertising.

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Inbound Marketing for Startups How to earn your customers’ interest, rather than buying it with great content, SEO, social & conversion marketing. Rand Fishkin | CEO http://bit.ly/imforstartups
Let’s Start with a Story
R My First 6 Years as a Startup Founder Blog post: http://randfishkin.com/blog/103/just-keep-going Rand and Gillian’s Combined Personal Debt
The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits We took one round of financing in 2007; $1.1MM from Ignition + Curious Office
The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits Launched our Link Graph Index
The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits In 2009, we dropped consulting entirely
The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits 2010 had 7,000 paying subscribers
The Last 5 Years Full story at http://randfishkin.com/blog/128/misadventures-venture-capital-funding Monthly Visits Failed to raise funding (despite long, nasty efforts) in 2009 and 2011
The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits 2011 will be our first 8-figure year, with 15,000 subscribers and nearly 1.5mm visits/month
How Do We Get Customers? ~18% of our signups come via paid channels (in blue); the rest are via inbound channels Paid Channels Inbound
Interruption vs. Inbound
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Some Marketing
Interruption… Stop Us
From Doing What We Want
R So It Can Sell Us
R Stuff We Don’t Need
That’s Interruption Marketing.
R
R Interruption Marketers
R Interruption Marketers Me
R Interruption Marketers Me Ads
R That’s Not How We Roll.
How People Buy in 2011
R Realize a Need
R Investigate Options
R Ask Our Friends
R Seek Out Experts
R Find Communities
R Dig Into Every Detail Available
R Convert
R You Don’t Buy Those Visitors. You Earn Them.
R In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing -noun Any tactic that relies on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.
R We’re Here to Help
Startups Disrupt Markets. How About Marketing?
Inbound Channels
Content
Influences Everything
Without Great Content…
There’s No Chance of Success.
Content Can Mean:
“ Content.”
Community
Product
Or Distribution
No Matter the Form; Content is the Foundation of Great Inbound Marketing
Search
Search is How Things Get Found.
Search = Discovery
Discovery Leads to Sharing
Search is Still Big
And Growing Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day on Google
Search Often Brings the Most Highly Qualified Traffic
But Guess Where Searchers Click… ~20% of clicks ~80% of clicks
Social
Social Lives at the Top of the Funnel
Social is Discovery Prior to Interest
Social Demands Great Content,
And Rewards It.
Today, Social is a Huge Influence on Search
And Social Appears to Be Fragmenting into Multiple Large Communities (and thousands of small ones) 120mm Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 10mm Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm
Email
Email is Social’s “Secret Weapon” http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/social-medias-secret-weapon-email.html
And Email Marketing is Insanely Profitable/Powerful http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/
Conversion
The Funnel Only Exists So It Can Convert.
Optimizing Conversion Means Measuring & Testing http://dmix.ca/2010/05/how-we-increased-our-conversion-rate-by-72/
It Means Listening, Too.
A Lot of Conversion is Wrapped in Soft Metrics
Branding
Messaging
Familiarity
Trust
CRO is a Critical Practice
But it Requires Holistic Marketing to Succeed.
Building an Inbound Strategy
R Who is Your Audience? http://xrrr-slog.blogspot.com/2007/10/corporate-demographics-2007.html
R Where are they on the Web? http://searchengineland.com/a-portrait-of-who-uses-social-networks-in-the-u-s-and-how-social-media-affects-our-lives-81653
R What Content Works There? http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/
R
R How Will You Get Visitors Into Your Funnel? Multiple paths can work, so long as you segment them when tracking CR + CLTV Email Retargeting Social OAuth Phone Number Mailing Address Branding/Awareness Free Trial
R How Will You Measure & Improve? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media Step #1: Discover Step #2:Test Step #3: Measure Step #4: Repeat Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list. Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector. Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.
Top 10 Inbound Marketing Tactics & Examples for Startups
R #1: Create Sharing Incentives http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html to link to!
R #1: Create Sharing Incentives Urbanspoon’s “Spoonback” program allowed them to compete w/ Yelp and build awareness to foodies, direct traffic from relevant sites and great SEO. Founders credited the concept as being the most important part of the company’s success.
R #2: Mine the Social Web for Engagement Opportunities Twitter, LinkedIn, Q+A Sites, Google+, Blog Posts and Facebook can all work
R #3: Create & Spread Embeddable Content http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/home is a great example
R #4: Make Your Data Interesting; Share It Probably the best case study around: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
R #5: Mine Your Twitter Followers, Emails, etc. Via Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive: http ://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28 / ; tool is here: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/twitter-follower-analytics
R #6: Use Social to Connect w/ Journalists + Bloggers An amazing research tool: http://followerwonk.com
R #7: Build Features that Require and/or Reward Sharing http://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-Dropboxs-referral-program-at-bringing-in-*paying*-users-i-e-how-many-subscribers-do-they-have
R #8: Give Your Community a Platform Moz has a Q+A forum, a blog and a user-generated content platform, along w/ robust user profiles and a points/gamification system. Content contributed by non-employees is ~35% of our overall traffic
R #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author - good how-to
R #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps We use http://wistia.com to post videos that automatically send video XML Sitemaps to Google
R #10: Create a Monthly Top X Influencers in Your Industry http://www.seattle20.com/startup-index.aspx updates monthly, but doesn’t use badges (which I highly recommend)